{"id":5637,"date":"2014-11-26T08:59:27","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T13:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/?p=5637"},"modified":"2014-12-23T12:53:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T17:53:42","slug":"its-a-reality-now-gulf-of-maine-cod-under-emergency-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/its-a-reality-now-gulf-of-maine-cod-under-emergency-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a reality now:  Gulf of Maine cod under emergency restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GLOUCESTER, MA \u2013 Everyone knew it was coming, but the official Nov. 10 announcement of emergency closures and trip limits to further protect Gulf of Maine cod still hit people with hurricane force.\u00a0 The details were just so severe.<\/p>\n<p>The day the news became public, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) first held a press conference to widely broadcast its decision to take extreme action and explain the reasoning behind it.<\/p>\n<p>Then, an hour and a half later, the agency held a \u201ctown hall\u201d style webinar\/call-in session to walk industry members through the specifics.\u00a0 Many did call in \u2013 fishermen, boat owners, sector managers, and even a few members of the New England Fishery Management Council, which had recommended that NMFS take emergency action without specifying the details (see CFN December 2014 for 10-page \u201cSpecial Report\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Three days later, on Nov. 13, the measures went into place.\u00a0 Thirty-minute square blocks 132, 133, 125, and the northern half of 124 were closed to commercial and recreational gear \u201ccapable of catching cod\u201d (see chart for block locations).\u00a0 Trawlers were shut out immediately.\u00a0 Fixed gear fishermen \u2013 gillnetters and longliners \u2013 were given a two-week grace period to remove gear.<\/p>\n<p>Outside of the closed areas, common pool and sector boats became subject to a 200-pound trip limit for Gulf of Maine cod throughout the \u201cGulf of Maine Broad Stock Area.\u201d\u00a0 Sector boats, which previously were prohibited from discarding legal sized cod, now are required to do just that \u2013 throw back all cod, even legal sized ones, above the trip limit.<\/p>\n<p>NMFS said it took this step to encourage fishermen to \u201cavoid catching cod,\u201d which, in turn, would \u201cavoid the need to discard catch beyond the 200-pound trip limit.\u201d\u00a0 Recreational fishermen, including party and charter vessels, are now under a zero possession limit for Gulf of Maine cod for the duration of the emergency action&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"Meta Slider - HTML Overlay - CFN_12_14-cover\" src=\"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/CFN_12_14-cover-121x150.jpg\" width=\"121\" height=\"150\" \/>Read the rest of this story and much, much more in the December issue of\u00a0<em>Commercial Fisheries News<\/em>. \u00a0Buy this issue or\u00a0<a title=\"Marketplace\" href=\"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/marketplace\/\">Subscribe<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0[add_to_cart=5805]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>(Read online immediately with access key and download for future reference.)<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"ninja-children-wrap\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GLOUCESTER, MA \u2013 Everyone knew it was coming, but the official Nov. 10 announcement of emergency closures and trip limits to further protect Gulf of Maine cod still hit people with hurricane force.\u00a0 The details were just so severe. The day the news became public, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) first held a press &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/its-a-reality-now-gulf-of-maine-cod-under-emergency-restrictions\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,170,103,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cod","category-december-14","category-maine-news","category-regulations","nodate","item-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5834,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5637\/revisions\/5834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}